hello! sorry this is random, but i was saw your post where you mentioned being hawaiian and that made me so excited! i’m half samoan myself and have always struggled connecting with that side of myself/culture for many different reasons but want to better about embracing it and everything. i’m also actually going to be moving to hawaii for school next year. i guess all of this to say that your small paragraph about better connecting to your culture this year gave me some more hope and motivation as i try to do the same:)
hi, anon! this is such a thoughtful thing to share so mahalo for your words and hana pono - good luck! - with your studies for next year and those that follow! identity and pride are such mulitfaceted concepts that can be difficult to connect with and define, but i wish you all the best on your journey. i have gained so much satisfaction being loudly proud about my culture, and i hope you can find the same <3. here's to contentment and delight in 2026!
HAIIIII am trying to get back on tumblr again, i hope 2025 has been gentle <3
omg rowan?!?!?!?!?!? in the (metaphorical) flesh?!?!?!?!?!?!? hi!!!!!!!!
you and me both are testing the waters of tumblr once again, and who can say what 2026 will bring, but my 2025, while busy, has been better than in years past, so your hopes are not unfounded <3. i hope the same as it pertains to you <3 and wishing that 2026 will be even moreso <3.
okay i want to hear your thoughts on this too 🫶 what are YOUR five things you discovered this year that brought you joy?
omg, clara in my inbox again... & on retvenkos no less... someone play 2011 by 5sos, we really do need to go back to the days, when the days were betterrrrrrrrr
like you i am going to be liberal with the term "discovered" and kind of cheat, but here we go:
ᴏɴᴇ — i've been rewatching naruto (almost onto shippuden guys, grant me fucking STRENGTH) and i also briefly rewatched part of furuba, some ghibli films, and also read some of my veerrry nostalgic visual novels and otome games (ace attorney... one day we will reunite). i also read a lot of dc comics this year, and while all of that might not seem to connect for you, all of those activities are things i used to do ravenously as a kid. i've never been one to rewatch things, so it's been fun to see how my memory serves and often fails. some call it ✨reconnecting with their inner child✨ but i call it appreciating my exceptionally good taste. it's actually really fun (occasionally cringey) to revisit the things that i adored so much when i was in elementary school to see which parts still hit and which parts... have aged. we shant remark on just how they did so for propriety reasons but i see your age lines, king, and maybe you see mine <3.
ᴛᴡᴏ — i have been a lot more ambitious with my sewing projects this year! i have always been someone who alters clothes and fixes up things here and there, but i am also and conversely someone who has an ego with the emotional skin of a hemophiliac, and so i often will find i have a knack for something, get good at it... and then casually and carefully make it so i don't have to try anything drastically new or different (all so i can continue to be oh so good at things without having to first be bad at them). challenge my abilities? no thank you! but!!!! i have been conquering this with my sewing all year! i have tried working with materials i don't usually use, i made more ambitious alterations, i sewed an outfit for my ateez concert!!!! all in all, i am proud of the ways i have had to learn to do new things. (and what is funny is i learned a lot of other things in sewing, too, for projects not for myself, but with those there is a level of fearlessness? maybe it's because i don't have to wear it or maybe it's because i'm hijacking my brain by tapping into The Need To Do Things For Others, but i am not nearly as deterred to try something new when its in service for another. i learned how to sew all kinds of things for my sister this year and yet for the one (1) skirt i've had in the back of my closet for three (3) years, i had to fight my inner demons and go: you can do this shit, it's literally not that hard. you can do hard things. now do them.)
ᴛʜʀᴇᴇ — i, too, have been connecting a lot with my culture this year, clara! it's been something i've been doing for many years post high school, where i often felt very carefully and low-grade shamed for being different from my peers, and perhaps it seems silly to some of you online folk who perhaps know be for being quite proud of my heritage, but it's something i am often quietly proud of. this year i have tried to be more openly proud of my culture — talk about it, mention it, invite others to take part in it — and i do think it's because i want the students i teach to be proud in themselves, and so first i must show it. i have been doing aloha palaki thursday, where i wear aloha shirts every thursday; i have been speaking more hawaiian in my every day life; and (perhaps most importantly) i have stopped hiding my accent as much in public. i also have been reading more books with hawaiian characters (very excited for the killing spell to come out next year!), listening to more hawaiian mele, and listening to podcasts in and about hawai'i.
ꜰᴏᴜʀ — this one is not at all something i have "discovered" this year, but it's something that brings me immense joy and so i shall share it, anyway. this school year (2025-2026), i am finally still teaching in the same school as i was the year prior and so now, for the first time, i get to see my past students in the hallways in their kindergarten classes and it is so!!!!!!!!!!!! bizarre!!!! lovely!!!!! invigorating!!!!! darling!!!!!! exciting!!!! astonishing!!!! to see how different they are, how much they are the same, and how they still remember me. what a beautiful thing, to see so many lives and connect with people who are moving beyond you. what a gift and honor it is <3.
ꜰɪᴠᴇ — the last one is a little bit harder to put my finger on, but i think i have really loved perhaps not discovering, but indulging in, considering deeply, sitting with and holding parts of my personhood that i can't change. i often pride myself on being someone who can make anything happen, who can do anything asked of me, who can rise to any occasion and make it better than expected — and i do believe all of that to be well and true and perhaps my greatest quality — but it's something not quite so helpful when the thing i want to make happen is something that is against me. it's wonderful that i can change anything and contort whatever presented into something unexpected and preferable — but when the thing i'm trying to change is me (and not, you understand, things that could be improved or streamlined, not things that are an active problem), me just as i am, it's perhaps not the greatest thing. this year i think i've done a lot of introspection and come to the conclusion that i don't have to change aspects of myself that aren't detrimental to me. i'm sensitive and i have loser (affectionate) taste in media and i say cringey things because it makes me giggle. i have negative rizz and a staggeringly abysmal aura (to quote my sister) and actually? that's fine. it can just sit here and it doesn't have to rot. it's ephemera, not flesh. it's alright to linger next to me without ever having to decay.
jujutsu kaisen ... focus on nanami kento
~900 words
warnings: vague mentions of canon typical gore, death, and violence
࿐ ࿔*:･ﾟ𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 ⋆.˚
olive notes: what is this? your guess is as good as mine. never really had a plot and the semblance i did throw together was left behind as i wrote; was simply thinking of nanami. could potentially fall under the "fix it fic" category but nothing gets fixed, actually, it's all very vague terms. malicious disregard for canon post shibuya arc and we love that, actually.
࿐ ࿔*:･ﾟ𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 ⋆.˚
Sometimes, deep in the placidness of Nanami's monotony, memories still had their teeth.
Filed sharp to cut deep, lined in too-many jagged-bent rows, a gluttonous maw bent on devouring the thick film of opaque that had settled over his mind upon waking in a room of IV drips and monitor sounds, so much antiseptic he could almost taste it. It had all been a great emptiness, then, the days previous and the recollection of them. A blank period. A stark white page.
People spoke of some incident in Shibuya, but when he passed them, all their language caught in their throat, their uncomfortability unlike the stiffness he was used to — something almost laced with pity, a silence seemingly self imposed but strange.
And then he'd been accosted by the claws of something wretched; the ink, in flashes, would bleed.
Fire; no — an eruption. All this, disrupted by the movement of a still-wrapped blade. The heat of licking flames. Or rather, the reflective quality of gushing lifeblood. A train station. Gore that couldn't belong. Viscera on tiled walls. A boy with brown eyes far too wide, but in an expression where only joy should have twisted, the dawning of horror, a primal sort of fear. Dark and neatly-cut hair, but if he blinked, it distorted to something pink and matted.
"Memory suppression." Ieri's tone had been clipped and stoic, but not any more than what was usual for the medic. Her voice pricked the way her needles did, but never pried. "They're keeping a few of you under a kind of sedation until you're fully recovered. No memories, no motivations. No motivations... you'll be just empty enough to properly heal."
Whoever this mysterious and omnipotent "they" had been, Ieri hadn't said. Nanami knew better than to ask, certain too much curiosity would only lead to the administration of an even thicker haze, a heavier turbidity.
"An excess of consideration," was all he grunted, the sound still dry in his throat. Ieri had seemingly liked that, muttering some deadpan assent.
All-too clearly, he could remember this: it wasn't him that should be receiving all this gentle attention.
The tunnel, again, the stairs leading down to it. Grotesqueries made of barely-flesh, bloated and infested, gnawing on all the humanity that ached to remain. A weeping, or maybe a scream.
He'd been permitted to leave the hospital sooner than he would have expected, and Nanami slipped into the tedium of routine perhaps all too easily. Inconvenience and small appreciations; little disappointments and building blocks of respect. The familiar sights of a street that lacked it color, the steps up to an apartment building that no longer felt like his, a cat meowing at him impatiently, always one eye closed, petulance all-too-aware of when it was last fed. One week, then the end point of two. Life was lived in breaths of static air, and wounds knit themselves together, leaving the tissue scarred.
The technique that held his recollection suspended was strong; whoever had gotten inside his head, bobbing and weaving between his thoughts and impulses to corral his memory and bind it, was certainly someone talented. A curious thing, he couldn't possibly fathom who it could be. Perhaps not a flaw of his own but a feature of their design. For the majority of his days, Nanami walked through the world in one part obscurity, two-thirds known.
But then the stasis that held him turned to knife point, the unknown within him writhed and in the drip of it's sweat, some fragment of truth.
A gasp. Another's giggle. Then, someone who heaved. Regret and unwillingness were a bile pooling in a mouth too blood-drowned to absorb them, and as all acid does, it burned. Words spoken in the familiar gravel of his vocal tone, but when it hit the soundscape of this tunnel with it's overbright glare and it's too-tight walls, it echoed with an intent and timbre that could never match his own.
"You take it from here."
Nanami would find himself not-breathing, sometimes shaking. He'd loosen the screaming muscles of his balled fist. Tomorrow, when it would be time for his examination, he would say nothing.
The ever mysterious "they" — the higher-ups, some clan leader, perhaps even Gojo, the loose canon — wanted him unknowing and so he would let his silence reign. Nanami was much too intelligent to give over to his sensitivities and offer them any reason to think him not perfectly composed, unaware, mending, but perhaps not entirely healed.
It was always stillness that did it, inertia that would coax the teeth and their ripples of memory. Nanami had taken to courting the uselessness of tranquility — all to lure the brutality of his lost memoriam — the night he found the gallery.
A quiet place to loose himself, a hall double long and plain-white, whole lives slipping through a thinning crowd to gaze upon paintings and glass bottled exhibits, a dull hum he could almost equate to the sound of office fluorescence, or a vacant subway.
A bridge in front of a cityscape, an impressionist interpretation of rain, a vase of flowers painted in a dying moment so their wilt would be infinite, and then, in the depths of a gallery of modern art, a glittering Malaysian sea.
Sand with grit that almost felt real, sea foam so effervescent he could skim it off the surface of a gentle tide like carbonated dreams. Rich waters that scintillated and gleamed that in a moment he could imagine tasting the salt and hearing the rush of the shallows once-deep. He closed his eyes and the space of memory playing against his eyelids and horror brimming in a heart weary-thin, a tear touched his cheek and Nanami remembered.
The grit of his voice was sand that could never belong to him, and the wet of his eye seas that pulled him back to the violence of their nature, the promise he still had to keep.
"Itadori."
tagging @permanentreverie because you said i should post.
rules : make a poll with 10-12 of your all time favorite female characters and have your followers choose the one they think is most similar to you
tagged by @permanentreverie & @musicallisto <3 adore you both <3
also, curse you, clara, i was going to put antigone on here for me, too, but then lo and behold you have both antigone AND lady macbeth on yours??? forcing me to choose one???? stealing my personality but doing it better since day one of being on this cursed website, i'm calling foul play.
who is the most similar to me?
inej ghafa (grishaverse)
nani pelekai (lilo and stitch)
shaak ti (star wars)
anita (west side story)
lady macbeth (macbeth)
rin sohma (fruits basket)
machi kuragi (fruits basket)
mina harker (dracula)
raven - rachel roth (dc comics)
touka kirishima (tokyo ghoul)
violet baudelaire (a series of unfortunate events)
elizabeth swann (pirates of the caribbean)
Voting ended onDec 7, 2025
if you're wondering what shaak ti is doing here then you simply Don't Get Her the way i do and you need to consider thinking about that for a moment; what is not to like.
tagging: @ivyquity, @eclliipsed, @wandamayday, and anyone else who wants too!
solar flares literally changed my brain chemistry and made me fall back in love with voltron. your writing is so beautiful and it was so beautifully paced and written I actually cried. thank you for writing and POSTING that because there was me before reading it and the me after reading it it was that amazing
🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 anon, this is so sweet of you to say 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 i've been feeling a little self conscious about my writing as i consider coming back to tumblr, so to randomly receive this message on a fic i'm rather proud of is so 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺
guess who is on break???? yes, yes, that is correct, i am back for a limited time only, and clearly the best way to remind tumblr of my existence is through a celebration!
also, i want to populate this blog with some original content before i start my bastardization arc in full and remind you all that i am an incorrigible fanfic writer first, and a person second, but that's a secret secondary motivation so shhhh,,,,, nobody needs to know...
from NOVEMBER 21st TO NOVEMBER 25th enjoy sending in these silly mini-games...
｡･:*˚:✧｡
ᝰ — tomboy
this or that !
(double points if you choose something so difficult i agonize for 4+ hours, still torn up about it after the fact.)
࿔*:･ — baila conmigo (span. ver.)
rankings !
(give me an album and i will rank the songs on it. give me a group, and i will rank their comebacks.)
ꨄ — gunshot
cast a kpop group as ___ !
(like cast your mutuals except my violent vibechecks are applied to the members of a group.)
૮ • ﻌ - ა — cheers
memes !
(send in an idol and i will gift you with my favorite meme of theirs.)
ੈ✩‧₊ — charmer
pinterest saves !
(send me an idol and i will give you a handful of my favorite photos of them, all sourced through every tumblr girl's bad habit: pinterest)
˙✧˖ — airplane pt. 2
mini aesthetics !
(send me an idol and i will make a silly moodboard of 4 or so pictures for them.)
⁀➴ — sour
mini playlists !
(based on the vibes of you/your blog, i will assign you with 5 or so kpop songs that are decidedly yours. bonus points if you give me your ult group so i can choose at least one from them.)
;༊ — lonely boy
mini headcanon sets !
(send me an idol and a silly little trope and i'll write brief headcanons about it.)
｡･:*˚:✧｡
groups i will write for: bts, seventeen, stray kids, kard, ateez
all groups are open for aesthetics, though if i'm not familiar with them, it will be initial vibes only. very violent. very valid.
send in as many as you'd like and please reblog this post if you send something in!
tagging: @mikrrokosmos, @chanselysees, @eclliipsed, and @armsunfold (the way I had to SEARCH for your url is embarrassing. someone tell god to let me have more silly tumblr time.)
ever since I learned that @retvenkos is a pathological liar i've been SCARED of her power, ok. the problematic part is not about her getting away with the murder, it's about her committing the murder in the first place. actually you know what, no. she would too.
requested
Voltron: Legendary Defender — Keith Kogane x Reader, angst, fluff
word count: 3.6k
prompt: “things you always meant to say but never got the chance”
A/N: hello hello hello, old friends. i am... perhaps back, perhaps just dropping something off before i disappear into the void once more. i want to get back onto tumblr but also i have the most anxiety over it so i’m kinda just,,,, vibing. it will work itself out in time <3. i’m kinda on the fence with the ending on this one but also i love keith kogane, and this is your daily reminder that he.
Summary: Time is cruel - it is it’s right. Here, in the Quantum Abyss, where time means everything and nothing, Keith has to reconcile with all that time means, now that it separates him from you.
In every solar flare - in every incandescent glimpse of his long-aching past - Keith saw you.
In the beginning, they were longer memories - moments recent and still fresh in his mind - arguments in the Castle of Lions, the words fierce and sharpened to an ever-stinging point. The apologies that always followed — the weight on his shoulders dragging him down, the pressure of the universe seated on his chest. You'd look at him with clouded eyes — like you knew you shouldn't believe him but wanted to nonetheless, and Keith wouldn't be able to shake it all night long.
Then, another memory: the moment of his departure — that longing in his bones he couldn't be rid of. There'd been something calling him — the promise of a mission grander than everything his fragile mortality had ever been, the guarantee of something more. It had been crushing. It had dragged him to the floor like lead.
He had somehow felt so alone in this great expanse of universe, but even then, there was you. Your eyes — filled with some kind of mourning — a smile on your face despite, and all the makings of a yearning farewell on your lips as you watched him go. Your jaw hadn’t trembled, and your shoulders hadn’t bowed; you'd been solid - the rock that always kept Keith grounded, even if he was halfway gone. He almost didn't know what to do and how to leave it all behind, but then you raced after him for a more private goodbye. Your voice had faltered as you held him tight and said you would miss him more dearly than sunlight on Earth.
"I trust you—" and there was something acerbic in the rawness of your truth "—so I won't tell you to be safe or to come back to me. I won't ask for things you can't guarantee. Just find what you're looking for, Keith… and if you ever do find your way back, bring me something good."
And in that moment, you looked so lovely, and Keith didn't know how to tell you that nothing would compare or ever be good enough for the brilliance of your being. What good could he possibly find, out there, when you were right here? What beauty could lay in store for him when he was leaving you behind?
It should have changed his mind, but it didn’t. The yearning he felt in his being then… It had been so strong and overwhelming - almost like it wasn't his at all but had fastened itself to his very bones for reasons he couldn't comprehend. The desire to follow where this new mystery led had been so fierce and untempered - a fire that reminded him of something he'd once been.
He had thought, then, that it threatened to eat him alive; it was nothing compared to the guilt that consumed him now.
But your eyes had shined like constellated skies, and a single tear fell down the curve of your cheek like a shooting star. Keith held you tighter, and for a breath that should have lasted an eternity, he couldn't pull away. There had been so much he wanted to say to you right then - so much he had mulled over and practiced for hours on end - but none of it came. All of his words caught themselves on the barbs of his ribcage, and all his farewells failed to assemble in his throat.
"Always," was all that made it past his lips. It wasn't nearly enough.
And for every moment thereafter - when he revisited this moment in his mind and drank it like a poison he couldn't be rid of - he had speeches and poetry to bare his soul. He had essays and dissertations to explain what lay amongst his tangled and frayed mind. Every moment remembered, after, was filled with the things he didn't say, but it was pointless, now, and that was a particular ache in his chest. You weren't here to listen, and the moment was already gone.
I love you. And I love you because my whole world is you, and it always has been. You constellate the galaxies, and you solve all my mysteries, and sometimes I fit in the palm of your hand.
The flare would pass. He'd no longer be blinded by the light. Keith's mind would clear, and that void named space would fill in around him once more.
But your ghost was tricky, and it liked to linger under his skin. Its favorite amusement was to swim in the deep wells of his thoughts — spiraling down, down, down - no matter how it tortured him, and no matter how it was an injustice to you.
But nevertheless, the flares would come, and so too, would your ghost.
Soon enough, the memories were less coherent. The solar flare would flash, the universe would still, and for a moment, Keith would see the curl of your grin or feel the pressure of your shoulder against his. Sometimes, they were just impressions - the knowledge that for those moments when his world went white, you were beside him, and he was home. Home - in that living room where the both of you had pieced together the mystery that started everything: the caves with the lion carvings, the desert with its secrets. Home - where all this nonsense began. It was like he could reach out, and his corkboard would be before him, and you would be flipping through miscellaneous books on his right. "Come look at this," he could hear you saying, "you'll never believe what I found."
Other times, it was only your voice - soft and low, the way it would be when you were serious and thinking, that Texas drawl still hanging onto every other word and coloring your speech like a fading memory. Like a secret the two of you kept; like the past you had once built together.
“Just find what you're looking for.”
But Keith didn’t know how to reconcile all that he left behind.
One time, the solar flare had been particularly bright, and Keith nearly thought he saw the future. But no - he was in deep bad enough already. Better to not confuse dreams with premonitions.
But your eyes had been shimmering with relief, and you ran into his arms without thinking, and when you crashed your lips against his, the world was like a mystery that fell into place.
But no - better to not breathe hope where all he had left was abandon.
“So…” and it was raining fairly heavily - or whatever constituted rain, on this strange creature, in this even stranger Quantum Abyss. The fire was crackling and hissing in the shelter Keith had assembled and expanded over the months, and on the other side of the flames, Krolia’s purple eyes danced. “Who’s (Y/n)?”
"How do you know that name?"
And Krolia seemed to like the defensive edge in her son's voice. Keith pretended not to notice the smile that spread across her face, the pride that had started to settle in her facial lines. "I see them, sometimes. The same way you see people I once knew."
The wolf stalked at the entrance of the shelter. He waited impatiently for the weather to turn, and he whined at the precipitation. He wanted to be away from the smoke and this pesky conversation. He longed to run free.
"It's not like I'm trying to, you know. With time collapsing here and us living in such tight quarters, there's no delineation between my memories and yours. You see my remembrances of your father, and I see yours with them."
And it wasn't even that he was ashamed or felt awkward talking about you. Keith just wasn't sure if he deserved to utter your name.
"Yeah, I know," Keith sighed and pushed his ever-growing hair off his brow. If time truly was different here, would he be older than you now? You had always liked your six-month seniority, and there had been a time when you playfully held it over his head. Part of him longed to joke that you couldn't boss him around anymore. But when he got back - if he made it home to you in one piece, with something good and apologetic in hand - would you be in a playful mood?
Krolia sat motionless - waiting for him to respond. Always so silent, always unmoving - it was as though every moment, she was drinking him in, trying to make up for all those lost years in the span of an instant. Always so patient - Krolia would wait forever for him to continue, and Keith knew she would never forget or let it go.
Would he look at you the same?
"(Y/n) and I..." and it was stupid and pointless that it was this hard for Keith to talk about you out loud. But where would he start? In the beginning, when you were little things that met before his world was taken from him? With your trip into space, him coaxing you the whole way there? With the moment he realized he loved you - inconsequential and insignificant, in a time that belonged to him no longer, on a planet he might never return to? Or should he begin with the loss of you? Should he start his tale moving backward and rip himself apart to decipher where it all went wrong?
Maybe he should just lie - make something beautiful and fleeting, tied with a silver bow.
He might never survive this mission, and anything he said here would be lost to the Abyss. He could claim whatever he wanted and leave out whatever he liked, and it might not matter, besides.
"I left them behind." And there it was, again. That inability to speak his mind — that barrier between his thoughts and his voice, where everything became bottlenecked, then fermented, and eventually died. Krolia was silent, still. "I brought (Y/n) out here to space when they didn't want to go, and I convinced them by saying we'd do it together."
The wolf was whimpering at the mouth of the shelter. He was pawing at what one might consider the dampness of the earth.
"But here I am."
"Yes," Krolia nodded, but her eyes were sparkling no longer. "Here you are."
And they were silent until the storm let up.
The vengeance of the solar flares never abandoned him. There was always you. Catching his eye from across the room and winking; taking your place on the Bridge with a clenched and determined jaw; drumming your fingers against the grip of your blade as you danced around him - playful yet focused before your strike. You never left him, and so the memory of you always ached. Deeper than this Quantum Abyss, more profound than any other memory beside. The sun would flash, and Keith would be suspended in memories that haunted him forever.
Perhaps it was all he deserved. Maybe this was some celestial form of penitence for how he left things and how he allowed them to degrade before he had vanished.
But if it were really you - the whole you and not just these fragments he was left with - he liked to think you wouldn't be so cruel. That at the very least (a least he didn't deserve, perhaps, but a mercy you'd allow him - if not for your love of him then some kind of sympathy beside), you would have let him sleep.
These days, he couldn't get much by way of shut-eye. Solar flares were tricky things - more vivid than dreams, so immersive they'd fool you into believing that moment and nothing else was real.
And sometimes, you would be laughing so hard the sound reverberated through his very being. And sometimes, you would hold him like he had never left.
There was no telling how deep this Abyss went, or what even lay in wait at the bottom. Perhaps it would take another two years more. Perhaps it would take decades and when he returned, you wouldn't recognize the person he'd become.
Keith kicked at a rock - or whatever resembled a rock, on this on this unbearable creature, in this near unendurable Quantum Abyss. It skid to a halt, the earth soft enough to absorb the impact. He sighed, kicking at another, and part of him was waiting for you to fill the blanks in between — "I know a broody sigh when I hear one. What's your trouble this time?"
And it would soothe all his woes, coaxing a smile to his face, despite. He'd turn to you haphazard, and the way you cocked your brow would be enough to pacify the worst of him. "And what if my trouble is you?"
You'd push him gently to sway. "An easy remedy, then. I'm always fixin' to change."
Was this what insanity felt like? For your mind to be trapped someplace where your body wasn't?
"I've left people behind too, you know." And Krolia was still there, beside him. Quiet, mostly, except for moments like these when she wasn't. They made quite the pair - this son who couldn't quench the fire that scorched him and his mother, who had long since been burned through - but that had taken time. Luckily for her, time was all they had, out here.
She looked at Keith with almost veiled sympathy. It crept up on her, occasionally, in the moments when there wasn't enough action for a sense of pride, and too much stillness to bear regret.
Keith didn't turn away from his mother, anymore. He just sat heavy with the knowledge of her and sometimes, together, their aches would ease. A breeze blew past them - sweetened from the grasses nearby, cold and everlasting. "We leave people behind sometimes." And Krolia turned her attention to the wolf in front of them, scratching his side, fingers deep in the soft, blue fur.
"Sometimes, there's nothing else we can do," she muttered. Almost apologetic, almost like she didn't wish to speak it at all. Sometimes, Krolia tettered on the edge like that. There was always something that itched at the depths of her throat - like she couldn't rid the thought without uttering it, condemned though it may be. Keith was used to it, now. It rolled over him easily without catching on all of his sharpened edges.
It was a strange sort of familiarity, to recognize yourself in another. It was a comfortable sort of loss, to discover who you took after years and calamities too late.
"We've left people, Keith. And sometimes, we don't know if it was the right choice." Krolia's head hung low, then - the usual glow of her irises cooled. His father. The little boy he'd once been. They were all ghosts swimming in her vision - guilt that couldn't be altered. "Sometimes we'll never know... but it doesn't always mean you made the wrong choice."
Keith scoffed.
What else could he do?
A solar flare passed not long after that - a searing white that coalesced in the image of something more, a promise he'd once avowed to keep, a fondness that was now consigned to ash - and Keith repented, once more.
But time passed, as it had no choice to. And solar flares accosted him, as was their right.
The Colony wasn’t what he expected - the discovery that followed somehow worse. Then the race against time, the battle against Shiro... the revelation that, at present, felt like an explosion - the debris of that blast all truths he'd have to swallow, craters the size of entire moons, the sum more vast that this known universe. It was as though two years' worth of heartache and sorrow unloaded at once, the fallout a reality he could never reconcile, the truth too terrible to name.
But still there, in the middle of it all was you - a breathless disbelief when he landed in the hangar, a flash of too-bright eyes, and an utterance of his name that felt like more of a homecoming than any celebration Lance might coax the others to throw, sometime later. There, amongst it all, was you - and all he seemed to bring back with him was discord and an infinitely deep sort of ache.
He yearned to fix it all then - to reach for you the way he knew he should and unload the thoughts that had haunted him longer than the restlessness within him. But he couldn't; there wasn't the time.
And so one longing in his chest only ever led to another and in the end, he was somehow incomplete.
But it was quiet now, on this strange planet that was so far from the Quantum Abyss and everything else Keith had once left for. The lions were recharging, Shiro was close to waking, and Keith had stepped out to give Allura some solitude and time.
He found you sitting in the shade of his mecha beast, its long shadow a respite from the bright stars above. You kicked at a stray rock and it tumbled, falling away from you, crashing into the earth further below. You shook your head, plucked the grass beside you.
"(Y/n)."
His mouth was dry, his voice more rasp than language.
And when you turned to him, the emotion in your gaze was too complex to name, and against his two-and-a-half years of longing, your handful months of separation rattled him anew.
Could you possibly miss him the way he had yearned for you?
"Keith," and you let his voice linger on your tongue - like the sound was something to savor, the idea something to hold - "you're always coming with a storm, aren't you?"
And his language was getting caught in his throat again, his words trapped in his mind, and all of that meaning snagging on the edges of his labyrinthine being—
You crashed into him with a force that sent him staggering backward. If it hadn't been for how you held him tightly, he would have hit the solid ground.
"I've missed your chaos more than I ever should," your voice was muffled, vibrating in the depths of his chest. And when you pulled away, half laughing, Keith swore you stole all the infinite beauty of the moon. "But never bring this like of storm again, I'm begging you."
And Keith barked a laugh. What else could he do?
"Alright." He tightened the hug for a moment before pulling reluctantly away. "I'll do my best, (Y/n), I will."
Who took the first step, he can't recall, but the two of you started on a walk to nowhere but familiarity, wandering away from the circle of lions but always staying in their view. He asked you to tell him something good, and you recounted some of the events he'd missed, being so far away. You pulled stories from him as well - the best that he could fashion, out of the heaviness he'd been doused in for so long. He apologized then, though for what, he was too vast in his meaning, yet too precise to be vague. It was enough, you assured him, but still too little to be sufficient.
"Oh!" And Keith patted for his pockets, then, searching for a promise he'd almost lost. He should still have it... if there was any mercy in this great expanse of space, it should still be intact...
"Romelle talks a lot — if you don't know that yet then you don't have to wait much longer to realize — and she uhh... she helped me find this." And he fished through the depths of him until he found what he was looking for and held it out.
A rock. No, more of a crystal. The kind encased in dull grey rock but shimmering on the inside, catching the light of a thousand stars and reflecting it back - a kaleidoscope of colors that Keith couldn't quite name. What did it remind him of? A geode, perhaps? No, something grander than that. Something otherwordly. Something that, when he saw it, reminded him of longing and love, and how those two were, in fact, the same though they settled differently in his chest.
Something that, despite his hesitance, was worthy of you.
Perhaps not anymore, though. It was split in two, cracked down an uneven center, and crumbling away at the jagged edges, but it was still beautiful, the same.
Keith couldn't meet your eyes. "She said they're rare on her home planet - a rock of some kind that comes from outside their atmosphere. The Alteans don't know what push them there, but I think I have some idea, after traveling through the abyss. It, uhh... it symbolizes something. I can't remember—"
You called his name.
Despite himself, Keith looked up.
"You brought it." And your voice was soft, but your eyes shimmered with all the intensity he could not bear. They were almost tears, but you refused to let them fall. Always so stubborn, you'd hold onto them and he'd be entranced with how they set your eyes to glisten.
"Something good... yeah."
You laughed, the sound incandescent.
And then you ran.
You ran into his arms without thinking, and when you crashed your lips against his, the geode fell to a softened grass-cushioned landing, but the rest of the universe came close, fitting itself into place - a mystery solved, an uncertainty no longer wavering but defined.
"I love you," and it spilled from his lips afterward, when he was gasping for breath, the words dislodged from the spines of his ribcage - desperate and bloody after clawing their way free. "I always have."
And you kissed him again to whisper it against his lips, soft and ever-present, a sigh that grounded him for the rest of eternity — "I love you too."
taglist: @teaand-dreams, @konepmi, @simpamonroll // add yourself to the taglist here!
(also shamelessly tagging @biqherosix because daniza is a keith lover and i think it would be a crime to not alert her.)
